Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
On this episode of The Lead On Podcast, Jeff Iorg, president of the SBC Executive Committee, discusses evangelism as a core function of the church. He identifies five key challenges why churches struggle in this area. He emphasizes that churches should focus on the fundamental task of spreading the message of Jesus Christ.
Creators and Guests
What is Lead On Podcast?
Ready to hone your leadership skills and unlock your full potential? Tune in to the Lead On Podcast, where Jeff Iorg dives deep into Biblical leadership.
Hosted by SBC Executive Committee President Jeff Iorg, this dynamic podcast provides insight for seasoned executives, aspiring leaders, or those in ministry who are simply passionate about personal growth. The Lead On Podcast offers actionable, practical tips to help you navigate the complexities of ministry leadership in today's ever-changing world.
From effective communication and team building to strategic decision-making and fostering innovation, each episode is packed with valuable lessons and inspiring stories to empower you on your leadership journey.
Put these principles into practice and Lead On!
Welcome to the lead on podcast. This is Jeff Orge, the president of the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, continuing our conversation about practical issues related to ministry leadership. We started this year by thinking about this theme, ministry is difficult, but it's not complicated, especially local church ministry. Now I started out this mini series of podcasts by talking about the reasons why ministry is difficult.
Jeff Iorg:There are both
Jeff Iorg:theological and practical reasons, and let me underscore the difficult. There are both theological and practical reasons, and let me underscore it. If I've not communicated this clearly enough, ministry is difficult. It's always been hard. It is hard, and it will always be hard.
Jeff Iorg:If you're waiting for that easy day to come where ministry is no problem, well, when that happens, you give me a phone call. I'd like to come and see that thing because I have never had a day like that in my life.
Jeff Iorg:Ministry is difficult, but particularly related to local church ministry, ministry is not that complicated.
Jeff Iorg:We are overcomplicating ministry so often by coming up with all kinds of things that we're thinking churches should be doing or involved in or communicating about, when in reality, the Bible lays out for us 5 functions of the church, worship, evangelism, discipleship, ministry, and fellowship. You could substitute a couple of words in there as I talked about on a previous podcast, but basically, it's those 5 functions summarized in those 5 words. And we talked, on a recent podcast about the idea of a balance wheel where you move along in balance with these, and I talked about why that's hard, how you can do it, all kinds of issues related to that. Well, I wanna start today by talking in more depth about these 5 functions. These 5 simple things that churches are supposed to be doing.
Jeff Iorg:And the first one I wanna talk about, and why would this surprise you, is evangelism. Now I said last week on the podcast that, one of the reasons that having a balanced simple approach to ministry is complicated is that leaders tend to gravitate toward what they're good at or gravitate toward what they're passionate about and focus too much attention on that issue, and I'm proving the point on this podcast. I have had a passion for evangelism and had some skill at it in my lifetime. I went to seminary with a focus on becoming a more evangelistic pastor. I ultimately completed my doctor of ministry degree in, with a major in evangelism and missions.
Jeff Iorg:My doctor of ministry project is entitled developing effective listening skills for personal evangelism, and my project itself was designed to help people move from a monological approach to evangelism where you go tell a message to a lie dialogical approach where you go have a conversation about the gospel. So it shouldn't surprise anyone that I would pick this one of the 5 functions to talk about first. It is something that's in my passion and it's something that is in my skill set, and because of that, I naturally gravitate toward it. But I hope to do justice to the other four functions and try to prove to you, that I can talk about each one of them with, some passion and energy because they're all equally important. Let's talk for a few minutes though today about improving the evangelistic effectiveness of your church, taking on this simple task of sharing the gospel and doing it in such a way that it doesn't become overly complicated and remains a simple focus of the ministry that you're doing.
Jeff Iorg:Let's start with a working definition of evangelism. Now I believe I have borrowed this definition from some older Southern Baptist training materials called continuing witness training. But if I'm in error about that and this definition was actually borrowed by that material from something else, I will be delighted to be corrected and to give a disclaimer on a future podcast. But I believe this is where I received this definition and where I draw it from today. My definition of evangelism is this.
Jeff Iorg:Evangelism is sharing the good news of Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit and leaving the results to God. Sharing the good news of Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit and leaving the results to God. Now I like this definition for several reasons. First of all, I like it because it's Trinitarian. It has a mention of Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and God the father all in this straightforward definition.
Jeff Iorg:All three members of the Godhead
Jeff Iorg:are active in evangelism, and I like this definition because it acknowledges it acknowledges the importance of all three.
Jeff Iorg:I also like this definition because it contains both the message and the power for evangelism. The message is sharing the good news of Jesus Christ. That is the message of the evangelist. We're telling the story of Jesus, and we're telling it from the perspective that it is good news. Yes.
Jeff Iorg:We have to address the fact that sin separates us from God, but we very quickly move from that to describing Jesus as the one who bridged the gap between God and us overcoming our sin, becoming our redeemer, and making our salvation possible. We focus on the message in the definition, sharing the good news of Jesus Christ. And we also then focus on the means or the power for evangelism, and that is the second phrase of the definition, in the power of the Holy Spirit. Now I have participated in about every kind of evangelism training program that's been available through Southern Baptist and even some outside Southern Baptist over the last 40, 45, 50 years. I I've been through them all.
Jeff Iorg:In fact, I I looked back through some materials when I was, preparing to move from Gateway Seminary to my current role and, you know, trying to scale down my files and clean up, you know, things I didn't need. I I found records where I was actually certified to lead various training programs that have come along through the years. So I completely believe in evangelism training. I think that teaching people methods, is very helpful. Teaching people ways of communicating, giving them illustrations, giving them answers to common apologetic questions.
Jeff Iorg:I think all of that has a very, very helpful place in giving people both the confidence and
Jeff Iorg:the motivation they need to engage in evangelism. But having said that,
Jeff Iorg:I wanna say as strongly as I know how that the power for sharing the gospel
Jeff Iorg:is in the Holy Spirit and entrusting him in the moment
Jeff Iorg:to share the gospel through you and to empower your sharing of the gospel and to engage the person who's hearing the gospel in a spiritual way that they might be quickened and changed by the power of the gospel. I could tell you so many stories of this. So many stories where the power of the Holy Spirit has been so evident in the moment to just help me or to help people who are with me to deliver the gospel in a way that was compelling, forthright, clear, convictional, and led the conversions of persons who were open to hearing the gospel.
Jeff Iorg:Just give you a couple of illustrations about this. A number
Jeff Iorg:of years ago, I was asked by a an athlete, a professional athlete that I was working with to meet up with him and and, to to quote answer some spiritual questions. Well, I'd had a relationship with this guy for a while. His spiritual questions are often off the wall, questions about the movement of the spirits in the trees or some natural thing like that. It was crazy. So I went to that meeting, frankly, not expecting much.
Jeff Iorg:And in and in fact, when I went into the meeting, my body language even communicated. I don't really think this is a serious conversation. I would lean back in my chair and actually put my left leg up over the arm of the chair and just sort of dangled it there. Like, yeah, I'm just kinda laid laid back here, you know, like whatever. And I said to the guy, so you said you had some questions.
Jeff Iorg:So what's your first question? And I'm thinking I'm gonna hear some craziness. And he said, well, my first question is this. What does it mean to be born again, and is that anything like having your sins forgiven?
Jeff Iorg:Like a hot poker, I felt just something surge through me, and I sat up immediately in
Jeff Iorg:my chair, put my feet on the floor, and recognized that God was at work in this moment. And I prayed a quick prayer, Lord, help me to help me help me to share the gospel. Help me to be clear. And I started explaining the answer to his question, and it led into a gospel presentation and conversation. And about 45 minutes later, he was praying to commit his life to Jesus Christ.
Jeff Iorg:It was powerful in the moment, the Holy Spirit at work. Another time when I was training a man in evangelism, I required back then in this particular training program that we were using, some extensive memorization. They had to memorize scripture verses and illustrations and an outline of the presentation of the gospel. Now, the idea was in the training that you would memorize the outline and the verses and the illustrations, and then you would draw from that as needed to make your gospel presentation. Well, this particular friend had been going through the training and doing quite well in learning all of it, and so he and I went out on a evangelistic visit and went to see 2 sisters who had visited our church.
Jeff Iorg:And, when we had some small talk in their home, and then finally I said, you know, I'm here tonight to follow-up on your visit to our church this last Sunday, and, I brought my friend along with me, and he's been learning about how to share the gospel with people, and I wonder if it would be alright if he just shared with you some of
Jeff Iorg:what he's been learning, and then we can follow-up with some additional conversation. They said,
Jeff Iorg:oh, yeah, that would be fine, and I said, well, go ahead, and my friend starts talking, and I'm not exaggerating this. He delivered the entire presentation perfectly word for word verbatim. It took about 30 minutes as he recited all the outline, all the scripture memory, all the illustrations. Now these 2 girls are just sitting there. These are young women in their early twenties.
Jeff Iorg:They're just sitting there on their couch just mesmerized, just staring at this guy while he's talking, And I'm looking at the situation sort of 3rd party observer over to the side. And honestly, I'm thinking to myself, we're dying here. This is not going well. Oh my word. He's gonna quote the entire, you know, training manual.
Jeff Iorg:I mean, what are we doing here? At some point, these girls are gonna interject and say, oh, just stop my word. This is way too much. This is like turning into a sermon. And every time he took a breath and I tried to interject, I just couldn't get in quick enough, and he just picked up and kept on talking.
Jeff Iorg:So after about 30 minutes of this, he finally at the end said, does what I've been explaining make sense to you? And these 2 girls looked at each other and looked back at him, and they both nodded their head yes, and one said, it's perfectly clear. That was amazing. And I'm sitting over the side thinking, what did I just miss?
Jeff Iorg:Amazing? And then he asked
Jeff Iorg:the next question, well, if what I've been saying makes sense to you, would you like to pray with me and commit your life to Jesus? And the 2 girls again looked at each other, and one of them said, no, I don't think so.
Jeff Iorg:And the other one said, I would. It's what I've been looking for.
Jeff Iorg:And we led that girl to pray and commit her life to faith in Jesus Christ that night. A few weeks later, she was baptized and became a part of our church. Now I'm telling you these stories to show you that in the moment of actually sharing the good news of Jesus Christ, that the power of the Holy Spirit invades the situation. That the Holy Spirit is at work in the moment in ways we could have never expected or predicted and comes into our conversation and accomplishes what we could never do on our own. So I like this definition because it's Trinitarian.
Jeff Iorg:I also like this definition because it encompasses both the message and the means or the power for evangelism. But I also like this definition because it removes all pressure about being evangelistic. Because the definition ends with this phrase, and leaving the results to God. I remember one of the most troubling conversations I've ever had about evangelism was with a minister of evangelism at a megachurch When he told me, I'm required every week to produce 2 converts. That's my quota.
Jeff Iorg:I almost fainted in shock.
Jeff Iorg:How can you have a quota for converts? That makes absolutely no theological sense
Jeff Iorg:to me.
Jeff Iorg:The results of sharing the good news of Jesus Christ and the power of
Jeff Iorg:the Holy Spirit are left up to God. You cannot control
Jeff Iorg:who becomes a Christian and who doesn't. And to think that you can and that you can establish some kind of quota system, I think, undermines everything we believe about the power of God. Not the power of our persuasion or the power of our argument or the power of our presentation, but the power of God and God alone to accomplish a conversion. Now this does not preclude sharing the gospel. I believe evangelism is sharing the good news of Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit.
Jeff Iorg:I think we can set some goals, if you will, or even some quotas on that where we say, I'm gonna set a goal of sharing the gospel with 1 person every week or 1 person every day. You can do that. Setting a goal to share the gospel can be a good thing, but there is no way you can set a goal about producing spiritual results like conversions. Only
Jeff Iorg:God can do that. So what is evangelism? It's sharing the good news of Jesus Christ and the power of the holy Spirit and leaving the results to God. Now, if that's our definition and evangelism is one of the 5 core functions and one of the simple tasks of the church, Why are we struggling
Jeff Iorg:in making this so complicated? Well, here are some reasons. Number 1, spiritual opposition from the devil and the world system he manipulates. Do not underestimate
Jeff Iorg:the devil's hatred for evangelism. He's opposed to it
Jeff Iorg:in every way, and if you become a person who shares the gospel,
Jeff Iorg:then he's opposed to you. And this opposition is often expressed by the coordination of the world system that the devil manipulates. He manipulates circumstances, people, systems,
Jeff Iorg:governments. He manipulates in order to restrict
Jeff Iorg:the advance of the gospel. So that's why you have to do spiritual warfare, we'll talk about
Jeff Iorg:that in just a moment, with much prayer that supports your evangelistic efforts as a church. So the first reason that reason that we struggle with evangelism is spiritual opposition from the devil and the world system he controls or manipulates. A second reason that we struggle with evangelism is that we have leaders who do not model effective evangelism in their personal lives, leaders who are not good role models. Now once again, I wanna be clear. As a leader, pastoral leader, when I say role model, I do not mean producing converts, that you have some quota of people who have to be saved or should be saved through your ministry.
Jeff Iorg:I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about being a role model of sharing the gospel, of taking the initiative to speak the good news of Jesus Christ to people and in the power of the Holy Spirit, trust that God is at work in your witness.
Jeff Iorg:That's what I'm talking about.
Jeff Iorg:So leaders who do not model effective evangelism in their personal lives are another reason that we struggle with evangelistic effectiveness. A third reason is a failure to create a sustainable strategy for training and outreach, a sustainable strategy.
Jeff Iorg:Now this has been one
Jeff Iorg:of the biggest changes in evangelism in my ministry lifetime. When I started out in pastoral ministry, the question was, which evangelism training program does your church use? The assumption was every healthy vibrant church had an evangelism training program.
Jeff Iorg:That was simply a given. The question now is, does your church have or has your church ever had a program to train people
Jeff Iorg:in how to share their faith? And I believe this needs to be something that is sustainable and consistent, not seasonable and sporadic. In other words, if you think, well, our church is gonna have an evangelism training, we're gonna set aside a Friday night, Saturday morning, and we're gonna have this evangelism training. It's just gonna change everything. Let me just save you the effort.
Jeff Iorg:It's not gonna change much. Now, it'll make a little bit of difference. No doubt about it. It won't do what you really need to be done until you find a way to create something that is sustainable and consistent. Now most churches that do this do it on a semester basis, meaning that you have a fall semester and a spring semester, and you run it along that same kind of idea of having a semester based approach where you do 10 to 12 weeks of training in the fall, 10 to 12 weeks of training in the spring, and you repeat it.
Jeff Iorg:In other words, it's it's something that's done over and over and over again. And when you do this, there's a common vocabulary, a common experience, a common knowledge base that grows up in a church because you've all been through the same training over time. And then, a fourth reason that we struggle with evangelistic effectiveness is the failure to value and use a variety of evangelism strategies. Now, while I do think there needs to be a core program of training that is consistent and effective, there's no reason why you can't also use a variety of evangelism strategies, from time to time to reach out into your community in fresh or new ways.
Jeff Iorg:And then the 5th reason why we struggle with evangelist effectiveness is failure to stay with it. You have
Jeff Iorg:to share the gospel week after week after week after week. And I know what you're thinking. Gosh, it's just never ending. You're right. It never it never ends.
Jeff Iorg:It just goes on and on and on and on. You have to have
Jeff Iorg:a a spiritual discipline, a spiritual commitment to stay with it, to keep training, to keep sending, to keep going, to keep asking, to keep the work going of evangelism consistently and with some intentionality
Jeff Iorg:through your church. So five reasons that churches struggle, spiritual opposition, failing to model, failing to
Jeff Iorg:have a sustained strategy for training, failure to use a variety of evangelistic methods or strategies, and the failure to stay
Jeff Iorg:with it. So now let's turn that on its head. If we're gonna stay
Jeff Iorg:with this model of evangelism being one of the 5 functions of the church, and we wanna keep it as simple as possible Simple as possible, so that ministry doesn't become too complicated in this area, and it doesn't become so overly complicated that people just simply cannot engage and participate. And if we're gonna take seriously those 5 things that we just said were struggle points or challenge points and try to overcome each one, then what are 5 strategies we can do to overcome these 5 struggles?
Jeff Iorg:Number 1, start a prayer ministry that
Jeff Iorg:prays for evangelistic success or evangelistic fruit. Start a prayer ministry. I heard a person jokingly say recently, we spend more time in church prayer meetings praying for people not to go to heaven, meaning praying for their physical healing, than we do for lost people to be saved and go to heaven. And that was convicting to me. We spend more time praying for people to avoid heaven than we do praying for people to go to heaven.
Jeff Iorg:So start a prayer ministry that prays for evangelistic success.
Jeff Iorg:At least a couple of models of what this can look like. Number 1, you can start a stand alone prayer ministry. You can start a prayer ministry that exists entirely and for the purpose of prayer. And I've been in churches that had these. I was in a church once that had a 24 hour prayer ministry where people signed up in the church to take one of the hours of the week, and we actually had a prayer a prayer room that was, in our facility that was accessible 247, 365.
Jeff Iorg:And if you signed up for 4 o'clock in the morning on Tuesday, then on Tuesday at 4 o'clock in the morning, you were expected to be there and to spend your hour in prayer. And the church had a team of people that put together the prayer list and kept them fresh in the prayer room. There was a prayer list for people that were being prayed for for salvation, a prayer list for people who prayed for for other needs, prayer list for people involved in ministry or leadership responsibilities. You get the idea. But it takes a team to manage a prayer ministry and make sure that it stays fresh and vibrant and meaningful in the lives of the people who participate.
Jeff Iorg:So one way to start a prayer ministry that prays for evangelist success is to start a stand alone ministry like I've just described. Another way is to combine your prayer ministry with your training program. So that if you say that you're going to train people for 10 weeks, you recruit prayer partners for that 10 week frame.
Jeff Iorg:And let's
Jeff Iorg:say, you're training 2 people, well, you recruit each one of them a prayer partner and you say, I want you to pray for this person during these 10 weeks that they'll be sustained in their studies, that they'll have the stamina for the work, that they'll be effective in their sharing, and that their work will bear supernatural spiritual fruit. And you have that more personal connection that your church members are praying for these specific individuals who are actually engaged in both training and evangelism, while they're being prayed for. So here's two ways to think about organizing a prayer ministry, which will confront the spiritual opposition from the devil and the world system he manipulates or controls. That's the problem we're trying to confront. Start confronting it with a prayer ministry.
Jeff Iorg:2nd, set a personal example of witnessing in your community. A personal example, find a way to connect with lost people
Jeff Iorg:and witness to them. Now quite frankly,
Jeff Iorg:this has gotten harder and harder for me in recent years where my life is subsumed and consumed by my service here
Jeff Iorg:at the Executive Committee. But when I was a pastor particularly and even when I
Jeff Iorg:was a seminary president, I was able to engage people through baseball. 1st, as a baseball person and a person involved in youth sports in my local community back in Oregon, and then, of course, for 10 years through the chaplaincy I did with the San Francisco Giants. Now that was my way to connect with lost people, share the gospel with them, and provide the modeling that was needed for my church to see me in action on these issues.
Jeff Iorg:Now there's something really powerful about leading a person to faith in Jesus at a
Jeff Iorg:little league field or at a basketball game or over at your house with a post game or post team party. There's something powerful about leading that person to faith in Jesus, having them come to church and then publicly presenting him and saying, these are my friends, Steve and Kathy, that we met through basketball and they've come to place faith in Jesus and to profess their commitment to him. Wow. That was a good day. Same thing with a couple named Jeff and Jody and others I could just go down the line naming.
Jeff Iorg:These are people that I met not at church, but met in a ball field or in a gym or somewhere where some sports were taking place where I was coaching or helping and or
Jeff Iorg:in some way involved. It motivated them and helped them
Jeff Iorg:to understand that they too could do so. And then when I said, well, if you're holding back because you don't have the training, we've got training available. You're holding back because you don't have the prayer support and the spiritual support you need, we can make that available. We can do what's needed to be done to help you to live out your evangelism as the same way you see me doing so as a leader. And then 3rd, you have to create a sustainable, consistent training program for evangelism in your church, and make sure it's sustainable.
Jeff Iorg:You're a small church. You can't do everything, but you can do something to train people in evangelism. And then you have to commit to it over a period of time. If you're thinking about doing it for a weekend or like 1 week or something like that, it it'll have a little tiny bit of impact, but not that much. When I started a certain training program years ago in our church, we started it on a semester basis.
Jeff Iorg:In the 1st semester, we had some good results, and the next semester more, and the next semester more. But by the, 4th or 5th semester, it was astounding to me how many people had been trained, how many people were continuing to actively share their faith and be engaged in sharing their faith, and just what a difference it was making to stay with it over time. It's kind of like the principle of compounding interest in your savings account or
Jeff Iorg:in your retirement fund. You put in a little
Jeff Iorg:and then the interest compounds over time, and it turns into a lot. You put in a little bit of effort training some people in evangelism, and then that number turns from 1 to 3 and from 3 to 5 and from 5 to 7, And pretty soon, over a period of say, 2, 3 years, you've got 20, 30 people who've been through this kind of training and are out there sharing their faith and making a difference. So trust the compounding principle, to produce long term, dramatic results as you build on this evangelism training that you're doing and strengthen your church. Then number 4, I said, weakness was a failure to use different methods. So the strength would be use a variety of evangelistic methods to supplement your core program.
Jeff Iorg:Now your core program is gonna revolve around training and visiting and sharing the faith and all of that. There's other ways to do evangelism. There's something called target group evangelism where you pick an apartment complex or you pick something like a particular ethnic group or you maybe pick a prison or something like that. And you say, we're gonna develop a specific evangelistic outreach to this particular target group. And we're gonna send people into this target group who have passion, and have knowledge, and have connection, and we're gonna see if we can win them to faith in Christ.
Jeff Iorg:Mass evangelism still works where you have crusades or revivals or big events. Education evangelism. I I once for years taught a a 4 week course called discover the Bible. It was for non Christians, where they could come and learn about how to get acquainted with and into the bible for the first time. That was an educational evangelism approach.
Jeff Iorg:And then there's something called event evangelism, evangelism where you just do events and as a part of your event, you include something about the gospel. Super Bowl party, special Sundays, concerts, you get the idea. And then ministry evangelism, where you're doing acts of kindness or car washes or plant distributions or something like this, where you go into a community and say, we wanna meet your needs in the name of Jesus. And, oh, by the way, do you have a minute to talk about your spiritual convictions and your spiritual future? So, a variety of methods can be used to supplement your core program.
Jeff Iorg:And then the 5th thing I said was failure to stay with it. Well, here's the solution to that. Stay with it. Just stay with it. You say, but it's discouraging.
Jeff Iorg:It's hard. It's challenging. Yes. I said at the beginning of this series of podcast, ministry is difficult. Let's just get that out there.
Jeff Iorg:It's difficult, but it's not complicated. Share the gospel. Share the gospel and train people to share it with you and to go with you when you share the gospel, and then train more people, and then involve them in different ways in sharing the gospel in your church and through your church and in your community and in ways that are unique to you. Share the gospel. Friends, ministry is difficult, but it is not complicated.
Jeff Iorg:One of the 5 core functions of the church is evangelism. Evangelism is sharing the good news of Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit and leaving the results to God. There are definitely obstacles, but those obstacles can be overcome. Yes, it will be difficult, but it is not complicated to know what we're supposed to be doing. We are supposed to be leading our churches to evangelize.
Jeff Iorg:And we have to do it as a part of Leading On.